


Even If The Sky Does Fall

by paintedpolarbear



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Episode: s03e21 Cause and Effect, Episode: s03e22 Infantino Street, Episode: s03e23 Finish Line, F/M, Season 3 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 16:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11383926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedpolarbear/pseuds/paintedpolarbear
Summary: --"It's true."It turns out Barry's self-destructive impulses are harder to resist than he thought.





	Even If The Sky Does Fall

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a redeux/compression of the final 3 episodes of season 3. There were certain things that didn't make sense to me, so I made it better.

-~-~-

_“...imagine what we’d be without it….”_

-~-~-

His thoughts spiral into the deaf, oblivious hum that has so become him lately. Memories, little things ( _it's all history to him)_ dredge themselves up from where he didn't know he'd kept them ( _I am the future, Flash_.) while he ignores the growing knot of dread in his abdomen. Realization of something awful doesn't much resemble the cold suddenness of ice water being dumped over your head--it's more like looking down and seeing you’ve been standing in the bucket all along.

 

“Barry.” Iris puts a hand on his, bringing him back to the now. Her thumb slide-scrapes on his knuckles, like it belongs here, like their hands were always meant to be intertwined. In light of his present train of thought, though, a lump rises in his throat at the sight of her beautiful hand. “Hey. Are you okay?”

 

He's not.

 

“Yeah, uh,” he says. “Yeah. Um. Can I talk to you?”

 

He's being Weird again and he knows it, knows it in the way she Looks at him again and draws out the word “okay” like it's not really, but he can't help it and he doesn't know yet what he's going to say. She follows him into the crook of the kitchen and lets him drape his arms over her shoulders while he sways a little with anxious, restless energy.

 

_(One will betray you.)_

 

“I think,” he says, without preamble, before words fail him, in between deep, trembling breaths, “I know who Savitar is.” She says, in between deep, steady breaths, nothing at all. The world narrows to the kitchen with its lights off and in the dark the two of them, waiting. Her hands are still and warm on the front of his sweater, resting just to each side of his heart, in the right place. He feels like a live wire.

 

He hesitates, stutters an explanation-- _it was something you said that made me think_ \--and in the end he sees the horror on her face before he utters the word “me.”

 

She whispers, “Barry;” shaking her head, like she doesn't understand, because she doesn't; shaking, like she's crying, because she is.

 

_One will betray you._

 

He shakes his head and wonders what his future self will remember of this moment, even though he doesn't have to. If Iris dies, if he fails, if he becomes--he knows that everything, down to the splay of her eyelashes and the sparkle of reflection in her dark eyes, will haunt him in perfect detail for the rest of his life.

 

His breaths have become shuddering. He's crying, now, too. “Iris, I'm scared,” he says. He pulls her close despite the sudden itch to push her away, the jolting fear, the vision of her skin blackening and rotting beneath his touch--“I'm terrified.”

 

She whispers again, _Barry_ : a prayer, a plea. She bunches the sweater up in her grasping hands and cries harder while he rocks her.

-~-~-

 _“You know how much we love each other. You_ **_remember_ ** _….”_

-~-~-

Nobody takes it well.

 

Cisco’s found--something, he won't say what, only that it's necessary for the contraption Dr. Brand has been conjuring, and Barry can't decide if he’s going to help steal it from ARGUS with only the barest semblance of a plan or lock himself in the Pipleline until the whole thing blows over. Cisco himself is a mountain of inscrutability, unforthcoming about his feelings on Savitar, hyperfocused on the task at hand. His loyalty to Barry is warring with itself, and Barry gives him the space he needs.

 

Neither Joe nor Wally will look him in the eye.

 

H.R. is, unbelievably, as buoyant as ever, and makes a suggestion that none of them can find the heart to disparage--”put Iris West on a plane, to-to Paris or something--the _where_ is irrelevant--but the important thing is: we don't tell B.A. the _where_ part, and that way Savitar won't know where she is. How’s that sound?” It's the first real plan anyone has thought of that stands a real chance, so Barry agrees.

 

Iris protests, but only half-heartedly. Joe and Wally are going, too, wherever she’ll be, just in case. For that reason alone Barry feels a glimmer of hope for the first time in days.

 

Which is why he is surprised, terrified, and heartbroken all at once, when, after only a few hours, H.R. unlocks the Pipeline with an alien sense of urgency, panting and pointing wordlessly in the direction of the breach room.

 

Barry doesn't even detour for the Flash suit.

-~-~-

_“You will know what it is to be abandoned and forgotten.”_

-~-~-

He reaches Earth-2 on Savitar’s heels, fully intent on beating the daylights out of him and not much beyond that, and finds himself sliding down the wall and sucking in breaths that feel more like bruises. Wally is on the floor, hands wrapped around a leg that might be broken, might just be wounded, but either way is definitely smearing blood in places blood shouldn't be. Blood shouldn't be anywhere.

 

There's Savitar’s armour, crouched grotesquely in the center of the room, and then--

 

\--a flicker of lightning in the dim--

 

\--and then--

 

\-- _Barry_ \--

 

\--but not Barry--

 

\--and then--

 

\--”It's true.”

 

Joe, heartbroken, staring at the deformed shadow-Barry eyeing each of them hungrily in turn. There's something wrong and twisted in Savitar’s face, something _missing_ , besides the scar that spreads angry and raw over fully half his face and the frosted, blinded eye. Whatever good was in him had been tortured to a slow and agonizing death long ago. Barry, from his vantage on the cold floor, wonders where the scar came from; how long it'll be before he gets it.

 

“ _Barry._ ” Either Joe or Iris, it’s hard to tell; maybe both. Savitar cocks his head at one or the other, it's hard to tell; maybe both.

 

“Not Barry,” he chides. The echo of his own voice paralyzes Barry to the floor, its wrongness reverberating through his bones. His body is sluggish, groaning at his attempts to stand. “That's not my name anymore.”

 

“Who fucked up your face?” Wally, that brave soul, dragging himself upright despite his leg. “I wanna send them flowers.”

 

“ _Please_ ,” says two voices, “ _don't do this.”_

 

Savitar grins at Joe’s horrified face.

 

“You thought I wouldn't remember everything you said? _You don't have to do this, Barry. You were my son once; I loved you like a son, don't you remember?_ Of course I remember, Joe. I hate you for it.”

 

Iris chokes on a sob. That milky gaze turns on her, and for a split second Barry thinks he sees a little guilt in it, a hint of the pain that all the anger had suffocated. But he shifts, and it had only been a trick of the light. Savitar is done waiting, all hunter, all serpent, coiled to strike, and his smile is a tangible weapon in itself.

 

Barry lunges, faster than memory, faster than thought, before anyone blinks.

-~-~-

_“All I need is for you to fall far enough into the dark..._

-~-~-

Three things happen at once:

 

Iris screams.

 

The breach snaps shut.

 

A gunshot cracks through the quiet.

-~-~-

_you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose you lose_

-~-~-

This is what Barry will be told, later:

 

The bullet had shattered his sternum, slipped between the pericardium and his right lung, and exited somewhere through the back of his right shoulder, leaving a mess of shredded skin, torn muscle, and splintered bone that would take days, or weeks, and a hundred thousand calories to fully heal. What little damage there was to the heart itself was repaired in a matter of hours, precious few though they had. Joe and Cisco had thanked the lucky stars for speedster healing factors, the whim of the time stream, and sheer dumb luck. No surgeon could have reached them in time.

 

For much of the last four hours of Iris’ life, Barry floated in and out of consciousness. When out, he murmured and thrashed in an endless nightmare; when awake, he had begged Joe to let him die.

-~-~-

  _"The more you break the rules, the less they apply to you."_

-~-~-

Cisco explodes into the room, carrying what in some universe somewhere might be called a gun, if in that universe the definition of “bullet” was unrecognizable.

 

“The Bazooka’s ready,” he says. He looks at Barry all tangled in oxygen feeds and PPN lines and cardiac monitor cables, and raises his eyebrows expectantly. “Are you?”

 

He's hurting everywhere, starving, and is it just him or does the air feel a little thin? A bulk of sticky gauze he’ll have to find a way to fit under the red leather, a soreness deep down that he suspects will follow him forever, a heart unstable in many more ways than one. His strength is gone, and Iris is supposed to die in less than twenty minutes.

 

He didn't even die right.

 

There was no universe where his answer could have been anything other than, “Always.”

-~-~-

  _"...that I can be born."_

-~-~-

To Cisco's credit, the Bazooka had been ready. What it hadn't been was enough.

 

Savitar waits, nearly demonic, wreathed in the golden lightning that is, in theory, his own inertia turning onto itself; the Speed Force trap. It glows brighter for a moment (it's working, it's working, it's working) and then, with a _snap_ that feels like gravity breaking, it's gone. And Savitar is not.

 

Infantino Street is blessedly empty: only Barry watches Iris look at him--

 

\--and whisper--

 

\--and he’s too slow, he's always too slow--

 

\--and the knife plunges through her--

 

\-- _I love you_ \--

 

\--and

 

she's

 

falling--

 

 

 

 

\--and she's in his arms and nothing else exists, nothing ever has, and he's begging the universe to let her live, because this is his own heart that's bleeding out on the pavement, because she has made him alive just by existing, because it’s too soon for the world to lose her, too soon, too soon, too soon.

 

And then it's not Iris and never was and God bless H.R. but Barry forgets all else, feels the universe stop spinning as she comes running to his arms, overflowing joyous _alive_ and so, so crushingly relieved--

 

“You're alive,” she whispers against his cheek, and it’s all he can do to hold on, all he can do to close his eyes and lose himself in the flutter of her heartbeat-- _it’s so fast_ \--and press his lips to the hot tears on her face.

 

“You’re alive,” she says, and he feels her shaking, trying to hold back her sobs, feels her hands digging into the tenderness of his shoulders, feels her clutching at him with the same desperation he's felt down to his bones for months. He sways under the force of her fierce possessiveness. He regrets the bullet. This is a snarling, persistent thing, this living. Even more so is this living for _her_.

 

“You're alive,” she breathes, she breathes, she breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Starset's "Die For You," the song I had on repeat while writing this.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUTzZGR64mI


End file.
